Smiling Fate
by Icedragonmo3
Summary: Harry has lost everyone who ever cared for him. Can he cope when fate decides to smile on him for the first time? Rating for violent deaths in first chapter.
1. The end of the light and the dark

Author's Note: Set in Harry's Sixth Year  
  
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-  
  
It began a day like any other.  
  
Harry awoke, groggily, as he always does, pulling himself out of bed with a weariness that was soul-deep. He pulled on his glasses, ran his hands through his hair, and saw the flash of orange in the starkly red room that was his best friend's hair.  
  
"OI! RON! FOOD!" he shouted, knowing the one and only thing that can get Ron out of bed before noon.  
  
"I'm up, I'm up." He mumbled, mostly trying to convince himself that he was awake.  
  
"I'll get 'Mione, and meet you at breakfast, right?"  
  
"Right. I don't fancy seeing you two play kissy-face anyway." He mumbled out while rubbing the sleep out of his right eye with the palm of his hand.  
  
Harry chuckled as he walked down to the common room, where Hermione was waiting for him.  
  
"Sleep well?" she asked, concern on her face.  
  
Harry gave an indifferent shrug. He had not been sleeping well for a week, and always woke up with his scar aching like mad, but couldn't remember the dreams at all. This fact alone worried him to no end.  
  
"'Bout the same as before."  
  
She frowned, obviously unhappy about it and frustrated that she couldn't help.  
  
"Now, now. None of that. Let's go down to breakfast and pretend we're normal teenagers for a bit."  
  
She snorted, but didn't lose her frown. "Pretend is about right."  
  
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-  
  
The couple had managed to ignite a light conversation over breakfast, with Ron joining in as best he could in his ritual early-morning daze. All conversation in the Great Hall was silenced, when the doors burst open in a torrent of blinding lights and wild magic.  
  
Death eaters stormed the Hall. Chaos reigned as well over a hundred black cloaked figures swarmed about, disabling the teachers within minutes and rounding up everyone in the castle to the Great Hall.  
  
Harry looked up from where he was forced on his knees and effectively prevented from moving with a powerful binding curse to see as HE entered. Voldemort.  
  
"Well, well, now what do we have here?" He spoke as he sauntered in, eyeing Harry with amusement, if he could even feel emotions such as those now. "It looks like this old castle isn't as impregnable as the old man thought, is it now?" He stopped in front of Harry, and spoke to him directly. "You know why I'm here, Potter. I've come for you. However, I think we can have a little fun first, don't you?" His mirthless chuckle was countered by a hateful glare from Harry.  
  
Voldemort turned away from Harry to make a statement of two words. "Gather them."  
  
Harry watched in horror as everyone he cared about was gathered in front of him, and forced onto their knees with their hands behind their backs just as he was. Hermione. Ron. Ginny. Remus. Hagrid. Neville, Dean, and Seamus. Padma and Cho. Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and even Snape were all lined up in front of him, as a mockery of an execution line. "Now, Potter. Before I destroy you, I will destroy everyone you love before your eyes. Consider it a repayment of the fourteen years of near-death you visited on me." Perhaps not a mockery.  
  
Harry watched, tears streaming down his face, as one by one they were put to death. Not with the killing curse, either. That would have been merciful. They all died by having their necks slit, the gore billowing out and down their respective robes as they tried and failed to do something so simple as breathing.  
  
'no.. no... not like this... they all died. because of. because of. of me...' Harry couldn't think. He couldn't speak. He couldn't even lift his head. Grief assaulted all of his senses, and he vomited wildly on the floor in front of him. On the edges of his perception, he noted that everyone not a death eater or himself was being put to death by the killing curse.  
  
"I see you enjoyed the show there, didn't you Potter?" Voldemort said, eyeing his puddle of bile with a raised eyebrow and a malicious smirk on the corner of his mouth. "I believe it is time for me to collect what I arrived for. When you stripped me from my body, Potter, you stole a substantial portion of my magic. It is time it was returned to me, and with interest." He bent down low to whisper in Harry's ear. "This is going to hurt. A lot. You won't survive. You would have been a worthwhile ally Potter, it's too bad that you had to choose the light."  
  
Voldemort stood, and walked behind Harry, who was still convulsing with audible sobs. Pressing his wand to the back of Harry's head, he began to chant, low and slow at first, and then one by one the hundred-odd deatheaters formed a circle around him, chanting along with him. The solidified chant began to rise in terms of pitch and volume, and Harry could feel a part of himself being drained away, a part he never knew he had until it was being bled from him.  
  
Voldemort abrubly stopped chanting, and after a second or two, began screaming shrilly, disrupting the death eater's chants as well as they stood, confused, not knowing if this was supposed to happen or not.  
  
Harry felt the tingling warmth being returned to him, slow at first, then with more insistence, and he somehow knew that Voldie couldn't handle it and that ALL of his magic was being transferred into himself. The containment bindings on Harry broke, and he stood and turned around just as Riddle's body began to dissolve, like ashes being blown away by the wind.  
  
Harry knew that Voldemort's magic powered his seemingly immortality, and that if he had just lost every scrape of it to Harry, that he was no more. However, it seemed like Harry's body couldn't handle it anymore than Riddle's could, and it was racking his body, inside and out, and hurt more than a thousand Crucios ever could.  
  
He screamed, but to the Deatheaters it sounded an eardrum shattering roar. A faint red glow appeared around him, and grew with intensity until it was blinding, until suddenly the glow and the green-eyed sixteen year old vanished with a shock of force.  
  
If one were standing outside, looking at the castle, they would see it collapse into itself, becoming nothing more than a pile of dust and ashes. 


	2. Harry's arrival in a new world

Breakfast was a bit subdued, Albus noted for the umpteenth time today. He surveyed the Great Hall, noting that without the Weasley twins causing trouble, that meals were mild, and unpleasantly Chaos free.  
  
Life had become boring, he reflected, ever since Voldmort was killed all those years ago at Godric's Hollow. It was too terrible that the cost of his fall was the death of an infant, the baby Potter. He looked to his left, watching Professor Potter pick at his food. Just the same as he did every day. Just by looking at him you wouldn't be able to tell that he was the one who had taken enough. Voldemort killed his son, and James responded with the killing curse in kind.  
  
Albus swivled his head across to the Ravenclaw table, looking for the tuft of unruly red hair that marked the Potter's only surviving child, Mina. He sighed to himself, mentally kicking himself for having thoughts that it was 'boring'. 'The world is at peace. Everything is as it should be.' He would tell himself, but the mischief lover in him, which was always fulfilled while the red-haired bandits were here, and the Marauders years ago, was aching for something. anything to happen.  
  
A faint red glow began to shine from the middle of the Hall. Albus looked to it, as did a few others, but no one else seemed to notice yet. The glow began increasing, becoming exponentially brighter with each moment. A sound, he wasn't sure what, began to hum faintly at first, but becoming louder and louder, until every eye in the Great Hall was focused, unmoving, unblinking at the source of the sound, the red light.  
  
Albus soon recognized the sound as screaming, and moved down to the floor from the teachers table with his wand drawn, wondering what it could be.  
  
He shielded his eyes as the glare became to bright and the sound to intense to stand it, and then all light and sound was just... gone.  
  
He looked where the glare was, and there was a boy with dark black hair on his hands and knees, panting deep ragged breaths with his chin tucked down against his chest. A faint red aura was rising up from him, as flames would. Albus began to say something when the boy began screaming again. It looked like he was pulsing. In time with a heartbeat, he noted abstractly. The thing is, he never got as small as he was before with each pulse. The boy grew, his legs and arms becoming longer and thick with muscle, his torso filling out, his hair growing longer until it almost reached the floor. The screaming, which began at about a mid-alto range, had deepened into a low baritone. There was a pause in his screaming, and a sickening 'crack' and two halves of a pair of spectacles clattered to the floor between his oustretched hands. A series of tears were heard, and his robes began to tear apart at the seams, unable to contain his newfound girth.  
  
Albus moved quickly, conjuring a blanket and draping it across him before all remnants of his clothing were torn to shreds. The aura faded away, and the boy. no, man now, took deep restorative breaths, never once moving from his position on the floor.  
  
The headmaster, at a loss for words for the first time in his life, could only stare slack-jawed as the figure beneath the blanket raised his head to look at him, uttering three words that confused him even further.  
  
"Am I dead?" he rumbled. 


	3. Grief, and finding father

"No, no dear boy, you are not dead." Albus was at a loss. Where did this stranger come from? How did he get into the castle? Why his heart telling him to trust that this person was no danger?  
  
"I have to be dead. I watched you die, Headmaster. If you are talking to me, then we both must be dead, right?"  
  
"Come with me, um.. Do you have a name sir?" Albus asked, wanting to get away from the prying eyes of the students and this stranger into clothing before continuing this surreal conversation.  
  
The man chuckled. "Alright, alright, Professor. I'll humor you. My name is Harry. Harry Potter." Harry made a move to stand, tucking the blanket around his waist like a towel to hide his personal effects before hand, and as he stood ran a hand through his hair to get it out of his face. There was an audible intake of air as every female student and most of the female teachers gasped at his highly muscled frame. The effect was not lost on Albus, but Harry seemed not to notice it at all.  
  
There were also gasps heard from Professor Potter, Professor McGonagall, and Albus himself at the mention of his name.  
  
"Let's continue this in my office, shall we? James, would you kindly gather a set of robes for Harry? And Minerva, I'd like to see you and James in my office with young Mr. Potter as soon as possible."  
  
"Of course, Albus" James replied, before hurrying, no RUNNING off to gather some robes.  
  
"Minerva, do you think you could help me steady this young man on the way to my office? I am afraid he is rather.. Heavy, for lack of a better word."  
  
Professor McGonagall didn't even reply, just moving to the other side of Harry from Albus as he reached his arms over their shoulders, using them as human crutches as he stumbled away from the now lively chattering students and towards the headmaster's office.  
  
Harry caught little snippets of conversation as they slowly made their way.  
  
"..my god look at HIM!"  
  
".he is gorgeus incarnate, I swear it."  
  
".I never thought I'd see an Adonis at Hogwart's"  
  
Harry looked over to where he heard this from, wondering what an 'Adonis' was, but when he made eye contact with the girl who had said it, she began blushing furiously, dropped her bookbag, and knocked over her goblet of pumpkin juice.  
  
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-  
  
Harry was just getting himself comfortable in his usual chair in Dumbledore's office when James came running in, carrying a bundle of black cloth in his arms.  
  
"This is all I could find, Albus, but I don't think it will fit him."  
  
Albus smiled somewhat senile-ish at him and stated "We'll just have to magic them up to his size then, won't we?"  
  
James, in all his confusion over what the implications of Harry's name meant, had completely lost all sense of thought. 'Of course you can magic clothes to fit a person. I can't believe I forgot that!'  
  
Harry, in a state of shock after remembering what happened to all his loved ones, didn't hear a word of the exchange. Tears, one by one, made their way down his face at the thought of all those he had just lost. His best friends. His teachers who were more like the parents he never had. His Uncle in everything but name. The love of his life.  
  
He didn't respond when the newly-sized clothing was held out to him, and he felt a hand gently grasp him under his jaw and tilt his head upwards to meet the Headmaster's gaze.  
  
"What's wrong, Harry?"  
  
"I... I couldn't d-do anything. I'm so sorry, Professor. It's all my fault. You w-would all still be alive if it weren't for me." At his expression of guilt, the man-child erupted into grief stricken, heart wrenching sobs, falling out of the chair to his knees as his emotional pain racked his body to the core. One could not hear it without being affected, and though the other three had no idea what was so terrible, all were openly weeping. Albus moved to try to comfort the boy, and Harry clung onto his robes as a life-line.  
  
Albus did the only thing he knew how to in a situation like this, and did the grandfatherly duty. He pulled the boy close to his chest, (On his knees, Harry's head came up a little higher than the neck of Albus's robes) and stroked the boy's hair, murmuring meaningless condolences, calming the boy as best he could.  
  
When the sobs had finally abated, if you strained you could hear Harry whisper. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."  
  
"Child, what are you sorry for?" He gently asked.  
  
"For getting you all killed. I only wish I got to say good-bye to Hermione."  
  
"Ms. Granger? You know her?"  
  
Harry nodded, a bit confused. "Why wouldn't I know her? Why are you acting so strange Professor?"  
  
Harry looked around the room, noting that Professor McGonagall was looking at him with curiosity, not a hint of recognition on her face. He continued his scanning until he reached the only other occupant of the room, who looked somewhat familiar to Harry.  
  
Harry stood abruptly at his realization, and turned to face the previously unknown man open-mouthed and tears ready to fall from his eyes.  
  
"...Dad?..." 


End file.
